Continuing the cyber-punk run I’m on by firing up a rewatch of David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (1999), which is up there with Dark City with cult movies overshadowed by The Matrix’s box office success. Pre-millennium video-game inspired noirish narratives about the nature of reality and its confusion with fiction; the type with strong fans who will tell you, “Forget that Neo crap, this is the real mind-fuck”. It’s also Cronenberg’s momentary return to the body-horror sci-fi genre fare after the controversy of Crash. A video game designer (Jennifer Jason Leigh) holds a preview of their new immersive game eXistenZ in a church with a small audience. When an assassination attempt is thwarted by a security guard (Jude Law), they go on the run, avoiding a shadowy anti-game terrorist organisation while needing to play the game to discover if it has been infected or disrupted; the game engines are embryos that look like alien organs with squid tentacles for cords; As if Apple went with HR Gieger for aesthetic design for product output. The game engines might look like rubber props but the old school effects ensure that everything is tactile; there’s minimal CGI which means that the film is really only dated by late-1990s hair and fashion choices. The body horror is goofy and giddy, and still has a gnarly impact, particularly the navigation about the game port holes – all the lubrication, insertion. It’s very Cronenberg – gross, sensual, abject, eroticised. At times, I appreciate Cronenberg more as a filmmaker than am ever caught up emotionally by his movies – there’s often a feeling of remove or distance. Yet eXistenZ was a blast to revisit, particularly the smooth plasticine youth of Law (already looks like he’s the robot gigolo from A.I.) and the underrated greatness of Leigh, just able to be cool, sexy and darkly sardonic, seemingly effortlessly. As much as it flirts with deep concepts of reality and storytelling, using ‘games’ as a way of commenting on itself as a narrative film, it’s also just wacky fun. That, and it sidesteps cityscape vistas and VR CGI for something more intimate and approachable, more invested in physical expressiveness and bodily orifices. Darkly moody score by Howard Shore and great supporting cast by regulars of fucked-up movies like Willem Dafoe and Ian Holm as well as a few Canadian Film Industry supporting players (Don McKellar, Sarah Polley). Available to stream on Tubi in Australia. Recommended.
VHS Tracking 